We are wishing a hearty congratulations to our new doctors!
Day Butcher was virtually hooded for completion of her doctoral graduation on May 21st in Counseling and Human Development. As part of her degree she completed and defended her dissertation in August 2020, which looked at evaluating an art intervention to teach idioms to adults with autism. The findings showed that 2 of the 3 participants did increase their knowledge of the idioms on the assessment measure. The 3rd individual did not have any changes on the assessment, but informally showed characteristics that she was improving her knowledge of the phrases and may have needed more time in the program to solidify the learning. For all of you who are research and data nuts, yes having only 3 people in the study was still a reliable, valid, and quantifiable study due to the methodology. You do not need a large sample for it to be sound research – it is all based on the methods. Of note, Dr. Day will be presenting her findings at the American Art Therapy Association at their National Conference in October in San Diego.
Deb Bacon recently obtained her doctorate in Organizational Leadership and Behavioral Health. Deb’s dissertation was entitled “A Qualitative Descriptive Study on the Influence of a Spiritual Component on Adults with Intellectual Disabilities”. This was copyrighted and published by Proquest. Deb continues to help her consumers learn and grow each day and uses all of her education to help her teams succeed.